


all the best stories

by lupinely



Category: Dragon Age II
Genre: Gen, Kirkwall, my embarrassing love letter to DA2 and Kirkwall
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-24
Updated: 2014-12-24
Packaged: 2018-03-02 08:41:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,010
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2806352
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lupinely/pseuds/lupinely
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Like all the best stories, it starts with a lie.</p><p>or: the one where Varric makes it all up for real.</p>
            </blockquote>





	all the best stories

 

 

 

Like all the best stories, it starts with a lie. If you’re good at telling lies, you’re good at telling stories. Or is it the other way around? You’re good at both, so it doesn’t matter.

The Grey Warden mage wants to know whether you’re true to your word—whether you can actually help him or if he’s wasting his time. And it doesn’t even matter, really, that you lie to him. You don’t have to be good enough. You have Hawke.

Hawke gets the job done. In, out, fast and bloody. There’s a lot of blood wherever she walks. But she’s got the heart of a hero: the stature of a champion. All the things you don’t have, right down to the streak of red blood across her nose, the white flash of her smile, the spark of fire at the tip of her fingertips. One part down to earth, one part selfless nobility, two parts crazy. Seasoned liberally with wild falsehoods, compliments of yours truly, only half the time the falsehoods don’t even have to be false. Hawke could walk on fire and you wouldn’t even blink to make sure you weren’t seeing things.

You’re a storyteller. You know a hero when you see one, and that hero isn’t you. But it doesn’t have to be you, because you have Hawke.

Protagonists don’t have to be heroes; you know that much, too. But it doesn’t hurt.

 

-

 

There are some things you don’t write about. Yourself, obviously. Bartrand, the Deep Roads, the mansion he came back to haunt. But Bartrand follows you everywhere through the years, across timelines. And always with him, the idol. The idol doesn’t matter though. It’s a mere trick, a diversion from the real issues at stake. Storytellers do this all the time—divert the hero on a fruitless quest for an object ultimately of no importance, something meaningless. But you won’t do that to Hawke, and so the idol doesn’t matter. You want to make Hawke’s story right when you tell it.

You remember Hawke’s face in the Deep Roads as she held her brother in her arms and watched him die. The pale of her eyes, the hollow of Carver’s throat. How he choked on blood, in the end. He didn’t deserve to die like that, but sometimes there’s nothing you can do. Sometimes, that’s just part of the origin story.

Hawke didn’t cry. You never saw her cry. Maybe others did—maybe Isabela did, or Merrill. But you didn’t, and you thought, _how heroic,_ and kicked yourself for it. It was your older brother who killed Hawke’s younger brother, after all, and through the transitive property of older and younger sibling, that makes it sort of your fault.

“Fuckin kid brothers, huh?” Hawke would say later: a very long time later. Years. “I guess you're the kid brother, though, not Bartrand. Fuckin brothers, then. You’re always just letting them down.”

Interesting, the inversion of it. Hawke the elder sibling, you the younger. But you didn’t see it then. You don’t see it until it’s too late.

 

-

 

Hawke has many people vying for her affections. That’s another trick you know well: how to keep the audience interested, the _will they, won’t they_ of it. You don’t even know how it’s going to turn out. Hawke apparently doesn’t either, because she doesn’t settle down with anyone, remains solitary.

You ask her about it one night over drinks, the two of you alone in your room at the Hanged Man. It’s late, almost early morning. Hawke’s got circles under her eyes like bruises. Turns out heroes don’t sleep much.

She looks shocked when you ask her. Tips back another drink as if trying to steady herself. “Come on, Varric,” she says, and pours herself another one; “when have you ever known me to be the type to settle down?”

You don’t point out the obvious: the four years in Kirkwall that are evidence to the contrary. Maybe that’s the trouble of it, the heart of it all—Kirkwall itself, the malignance sleeping under its surface, written into the very patterns of the streets. It’s ancient, this city. It keeps you awake at night, and you lie there staring up into the dark, listening hard, because you know, you _know_ , that if you just try hard enough, you’ll hear the pulse—the quiet beating of the city’s heart.

Kirkwall keeps Hawke busy. She’s obsessed with it, more than she is with earning her mother’s love, than with any of the shit going down with mages and templars and the qunari in the streets. It’s the streets themselves she cares about, keeps trying to crack open to find the hollowness inside their bones.

She tells you about the messages she finds from the Band of Three. Blood sacrifices, the generations of slaves butchered underneath the city. “Hawke,” you tell her; “I think Broody’s mentioned enough about the Imperium for you to realize this isn’t exactly unusual information.”

She disagrees. “The _city,”_ she says, pushing everything off your desk so you can see the map of Kirkwall underneath it. “Look at the streets, Varric! They’re glyphs. Built right into the foundations of the city. But I can’t figure out what they mean—I can’t tell what they _say.”_

You look. You don’t see them. You aren’t a mage, after all, and you don’t get why it matters. Anyone in Kirkwall could tell you that this place is strange, ancient, unsettling in a way that defies logic, defies explanation, even identification. If you could identify it, you might say that the walls stand at odd angles, or that the ceilings draw too close or too far away, or that sometimes you go down streets you’ve been down a hundred times before and end up lost in a place you’ve never been. People still go missing in Kirkwall, hundreds of them every year, and no one ever finds them. You don’t tell Hawke about this; you don’t want her to get more upset than she is, more obsessed. But you keep track of them: these people from Darktown, from Lowtown, who go down into the sewers sometimes and don’t come back; who find something down there that perhaps was never meant to be known.

 

-

 

You don't see the part about her mother coming. But maybe you should have. Someone should have. The signs were all there. The women from Hightown going missing--you kept track of that information. You heard rumors about blood magic in the Circle, but you always hear rumors about blood magic in the Circle. And this isn’t in the Circle, not really, almost not at all; except for the note signed _–O_ on the floor of Quentin’s small little hole in the earth, it wouldn’t be. But it’s there, and you know who that is, and the white lilies—you saw those too. Could have seen all of it. Could have pieced everything together. But you didn’t, and Hawke didn’t, and you run after puddles of blood on the ground, getting your feet wet in it, looking for Hawke’s mother, for Leandra.

(Leandra is simple to write, and you depict her with wide, fast strokes of your brush. A woman who has lost everything more than once in her lifetime. She blames Hawke for it, just a little, just sometimes alone in the dark, and you know that Hawke doesn’t blame her for it because Hawke agrees with her. Hawke sees it, too.

“Write it better, Varric,” Hawke says to you once.

“What?” you ask.

“Make this better,” Hawke says. “Make—me better.” She still isn’t crying. “My mother deserved better. Carver and Bethany….” She trails off. She looks at her hands. Spellcaster’s hands, a daughter’s hands, still seeking out the hand of her mother and closing, always, on empty air. “Make it right.”

But heroes aren’t perfect. They aren’t always better. That’s the catch, the hole in their armor; the place where the audience can crawl in and sink their teeth. But you don’t tell Hawke that. You tell her, “I will,” because that’s what she wants to hear, and sometimes you lie because for once it’s the right thing to do.)

Hawke finds Leandra. Or what’s left of her. Hawke bending over her mother, holding her close; the role reversal, the symbolism of coming of age. The terrible beauty of it in its own way. The power of it. Hawke, losing everything; Hawke, going home to the huge empty mansion in Hightown alone. The skeletons rattling in the walls.

 

-

 

Later (or is it earlier? You can’t recall): “I don’t care about the fucking idol,” Hawke says. She’s tired. The dark bruises under her eyes. “Do whatever you want with it, Varric.”

Bartrand is dead. Just like Carver in the Deep Roads. Over this, the idol: what your brother stole, and now what you’ve taken back.

You pocket it.

 

-

 

Hawke kills the arishok. Single combat. Ends the battle holding her guts in with one hand before she passes out on the floor. Anders stays up the whole night trying to keep her alive, and somehow he manages it. All you can think the whole time you’re watching her is: _glad that isn’t me._ It comes with the job description sometimes. Kill your darlings and all that. You can’t be nice when you need to tell the right story. Sometimes, your heroes have to bleed. Hawke just happens to bleed more than most.

You must, too, though you can’t keep track of it. New scars keep appearing on your skin, injuries you don’t remember getting. But you’re in a dangerous line of work. You can’t keep track of all the idiots who manage to knife you when you’re trying to watch Hawke’s back. The brutal hellfire at the snap of Hawke's fingers—yes, that’s much more interesting to watch.

Hawke wakes up a day later, her abdomen covered in bandages, Anders asleep in the other room. Isabela and Merrill are downstairs, playing with the dog, waiting for Hawke to wake up. But you’re there; you’re at Hawke’s side. That’s where you always are.

Hawke wakes up slowly, blinks at the ceiling. Presses her fingertips, gently, to her stomach.

“Did I win?” she asks finally.

“Yeah,” you say; “yeah, Hawke, you did.”

“Good,” Hawke says; “I shudder to think of how much you’d have to rewrite if I hadn’t.”

 

-

 

Sometimes you wonder if Hawke isn’t wrong about Kirkwall—the nature of it, the sickness buried under its stones and foundations and history. The unwritten tales, the reality of the place. You’ve lived here a long time—can’t imagine living anywhere else. And you’re a dwarf; you may have been born on the surface, but sometimes you still feel the strangeness of the vast empty sky.

It’s just—the totality of it. The Circle Tower, Meredith standing with her fists raised above the rest of the city. The blood mages Hawke keeps circling, keeps putting down. The templars gone rogue. The abominations in Darktown, the demons rising out of cobblestones and bedroom floors.

Anders comes to you for help. That’s strange, isn’t it? His eyes far away, focused, determined. “I have a plan,” he says. “To separate me and Justice.”

Can’t he hear it? The irony? He’s long been separated from justice. You don’t say it, though; that’s something Hawke would say, not you. “Why are you coming to me?” you ask. _Why not Hawke?_ You don’t say that, though, because that’s obvious.

Anders frowns at you. “Who else would I go to?”

“Okay, Blondie,” you say, because if Anders wants to play dumb, you’ll let him. “What do you need?”

He tells you. You know, right away, that he’s lying. A liar knows another liar when he hears one. You help him anyway. It is, you think, what Hawke would do. You’ll ask her about it later, once you’ve washed the shit off your hands.

You almost offer Anders the idol. Anders is a mage; surely he’d know what do with this object, this terrible thing of pure red lyrium that took your brother’s mind. It hasn’t touched you yet; maybe it doesn’t want you, doesn’t want your thoughts and head. It would want Anders. Maybe it would help him.

(No; not _help_ so much as _make the story interesting,_ but.)

You think better of it. Hawke said she didn’t care what you did with the thing, but you can’t help but think she’d probably be a little pissed off if you gave it to Anders, especially to Anders when he’s clearly plotting something. So you keep it. It might be useful someday. Or it might not. After all, it’s just a weak, poorly placed plot device. Maybe you should let it go.

 

-

 

Anders blows up the Chantry. Of fucking course. And try as you might, you can’t find Hawke anywhere.

 

-

 

Anders comes to you. You don’t even have to go looking for him.

“Varric,” he says. “I know I lied to you to get you to help me, I know I did, but—”

You interrupt him. “Where’s Hawke?”

Anders stares at you.

You pinch the bridge of your nose. “Just get the others,” you say, and Anders, looking back at you for a moment, does.

They gather round you, all of them: Anders and Isabela and Aveline and Fenris and Merrill. Aveline looks about ready to run Anders through with her sword right there and then. You don’t particularly blame her.

“We need Hawke,” you say to the room. “Hawke’s the only one who can fix this—the only one who even has a chance.”

They all stare at you now in motionless silence. It’s Merrill, at last, who speaks.

“I don't understand, Varric,” she says, slowly, and then her voice gains strength; “who’s Hawke?”

You stare at her this time, at all the others. “Hawke,” you say. “Local hero, do-gooder, Champion of Kirkwall? Your friend? The reason any of you are still even in this damn city?”

They just keep staring. They keep staring, and it’s like time isn’t moving, not really, and you want to turn away, you want to scream at them—why would they do this now, so close to the end, right at the turning point of the story where it all starts to make sense, to matter—and then you see her. Hawke, standing behind the others. Her head tilted to the left, staring at you. That faint smile on her face. The streak of blood across her nose. The mage’s staff in her right hand, bearing her weight.

“Hawke,” you say, relieved, and she presses a finger to her lips.

“Don’t talk to me,” she says. “Just act like I’m not even here.”

Maker’s breath—fine. You’ll play along. Hawke’s games, Hawke’s tricks. Just so long as she runs damage control on a city that is falling apart, not at its seams, but along the hexes inscribed in its streets.

“What do I do?” you ask her.

She shrugs; holds out her left hand, empty, palm upward. “I don’t know, Varric,” she says. “You’re the storyteller.”

And then she’s gone, just like that, and you think: _oh, shit._

 

-

 

It’s obvious, isn’t it? But only in the afterthought. Only when you’re looking back.

The lies. The symbolism. The poetic justice. The literary foils. Perfectly constructed: a masterpiece.

Meredith and Orsino are waiting for you. Behind them, the sky is blood-red, filled with light. The fire of the city burning below you.

“Champion,” Meredith says as you approach.

 _What would Hawke do?_ you think, even though you know; it was never about what Hawke would do. Hawke was never there. A fiction—the strongest one you’ve ever written. The character so real you that you thought she lived and breathed in front of you.

You’re holding the idol in your right hand. Remembering how the arishok nearly butchered you, cut open your stomach. Meredith’s sword is glowing, glowing red; pulsing in time with the idol in your hand, that venomous washed out glow.

It’s all connected—don’t you see? Like any good story should be. The idol, the Deep Roads. Bartrand sold part of the idol to a woman who shone like the sun; here is Meredith in her armor, gleaming red and gold in the light of the fires. You’re the one who found the idol and brought it to the surface, just as you’re the one who’s studied Kirkwall, the disappearances, the people still going missing centuries after the slave trade ended here. Their blood still lines the city streets, still feeds whatever hungers beneath the cobblestones: whatever lies at this city’s poisonous heart. _Listen!_ you want to shout. _Listen to me, this isn’t right—look under the streets, the hexes, the blood-soaked earth; there’s something down there, I tell you; something down there that’s turned this city all wrong._

But you can’t say it. Maybe, if she were there, Hawke could have.

You hold up the idol. See the hunger in Meredith’s eyes, reflected in Orsino’s. Aveline and Merrill and Fenris and Isabela at your back, Anders long since gone. Aveline’s hand goes to the hilt of her sword, and you think, _bottoms up._

 

-

 

Like all the best stories, it ends the way it started: with a lie.

“I’m not interested in stories,” the Seeker says. Brittle, angry. The long scar on her jaw. “I came to hear the truth.”

You fold your hands, consider where to start. There’s power in stories: yours more than most. What the Seeker doesn’t know is that the truth has always been yours to play with.

“You want to know about the Champion?” You lean back in your chair and remember the blue of Hawke’s eyes, the wry tilt of her mouth. The smirk that you could always hear in her voice. It’ll be hard to get the details right. Hard, but not impossible. You’ve been telling her story for a long time.

After all—you were always the one who knew her best. And this time, you’ll get her story right.

 

 

 

 

 


End file.
